Wednesday, February 04, 2015

As reported in the New York Times: “Islamic State (aka ISIL, ISIS) is a breakaway al Qaeda group that declared an Islamic caliphate across parts of Syria and Iraq last summer. It has killed thousands and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes, in what the United Nations has called a reign of terror.

On Tuesday, the group, which is also known as ISIL, released a video showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burnt alive.

The U.N. body, which reviewed Iraq's record for the first time since 1998, denounced "the systematic killing of children belonging to religious and ethnic minorities by the so-called ISIL, including several cases of mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive".

A large number of children have been killed or badly wounded during air strikes or shelling by Iraqi security forces, while others had died of "dehydration, starvation and heat", it said.

ISIL has committed "systematic sexual violence", including "the abduction and sexual enslavement of children", it said.

"Children of minorities have been captured in many places... sold in the market place with tags, price tags on them, they have been sold as slaves," Winter said, giving no details.

The 18 independent experts who worked on the report called on Iraqi authorities to take all necessary measures to "rescue children" under the control of Islamic State and to prosecute perpetrators of crimes.”